Separatist parties are seen winning a solid absolute majority of seats in Catalonia’s regional parliament, an exit poll showed on Sunday, potentially setting the region on a collision course with Spain’s central government over independence. “Now, we demand that they accept the victory for Catalonia and the victory of the ‘yes, ‘” he said. Mas spoke to a jubilant crowd, who interrupted him with cheers and chants for “independence!”
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A number of blocks remain in the way of a potential independence declaration, namely the talks between Together for Yes and the CUP and the central government vehement opposition to separatism and its insistence that independence would be unconstitutional.
Independence parties are hoping to secure at least 68 out of 135 seats in the regional parliament, which would give them the majority they need to push for an independence referendum.
Exit polls show Junts Pel Si will win between 63 and 66 seats, while CUP will take a further dozen.
With 93 percent of the vote counted, “Together for Yes” was projected to win 62 seats while the radical Popular Unity Candidacy party, or CUP, was headed for 10 seats, meaning a majority.
TV3 said pro-independence parties had won 49.8 per cent of Sunday’s vote.
Regional government head Artur Mas believes the only way forward for the area is to be split from Spain. The country has endured unemployment of over 22 percent for the past several years, reported the AP. Spain’s constitution does not allow any region to break away.
More than five million people were eligible to vote.
But the ruling party’s candidate to lead Catalonia, Xavier Garcia Albiol, acknowledged that Sunday’s result was a blow.
Barack Obama said the U.S. wants to work with a “strong and unified Spain”, while Merkel, United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker all warning that Catalonia faced exclusion from the EU if it pushed ahead with independence. The fear campaign carried out by the government, saying we would lose our pensions, that we would be unfeasible, that we would fight each other.
Catalans from both sides of the independence divide extol their Catalan language, spoken by most of the region’s residents and suppressed during Spain’s 1939-1975 dictatorship under Francisco Franco.
Catalonia’s capital city is Barcelona, the second-largest city in Spain. She voted for the Citizens party, which is against independence.
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Jordi Perez, a 50-year-old civil servant said he voted for “Together for Yes” because he feels Spain has historically disparaged Catalan culture and the region’s language. These elections have to be the elections that provide us with sufficient political majorities to be able to implement socially just policies, contrary to restricting rights and to privatizations; implacable with the relentless fight against corruption and bad practice in political institutions. They also expected the region would win some concessions from the Spanish government which will emerge from the general elections later this year.
